Using web technologies for research

At the NSF IGERT 2010 Project Meeting this week I will be giving a set of 5 minute talks on how Blogs, Twitter, Wikis, and GoogleDocs can be used in research. Below are some of the links and examples I used in the talk along with short descriptions of how these technologies can be used.

Blogs

My lab, CUPS, maintains a blog where we post everything from news about the lab to detailed reports from conferences we go to. The blog lets us post information others might be interested in even if it isn’t necessarily a paper worthy event.

Blogs are also an excellent way to learn about new information related to your area. Since there can be many blogs to track I use an RSS feed aggregater, such as Google Reader, to subscribe and keep track of multiple blogs.

Finally, blogs can be an excellent way to collect information about your area in one place where you and others can find it again. I use my personal blog, http://kamivaniea.com, to keep track of news articles related to my research. Also when I solve a particularly intricate technological problem that was impeding my research I post the solution to my blog for others to use.

Twitter

Twitter is an excellent way to aggregate and disseminate information quickly.  Good examples are: CyLab, Electronic Freedom Frontier, and Wombat Security. You can easily create a Twitter account for a lab or research group and post interesting and exiting news about your lab.

Twitter is an excellent way to keep track of what others are doing. For example I have a list of security and privacy twitter feeds that I follow. Everyone on the list posts interesting things about security and privacy so I monitor their feeds for important information.

Twitter is also an excellent way to connect with people online during conferences. In Twitter anything that starts with a # symbol is called a tag. Using Twitter it is easy to search for tags. For example searching for #igert on Twitter brings up a list of all the Twitter posts tagged as #igert.

Wikis

Wikis are a type of website that let people easily create linked content. Wikis are extremely useful for research for keeping track of information. Basically, using a wiki, you can setup your own Wikipedia that is dedicated to just your research. There are many different types of wikis, most wikis let you create web pages like what you see on Wikipedia but each type of wiki is special in its own way.  Here are some popular ones:

• MediaWiki – Originally designed to support Wikipedia, one of the more popular wiki softwares.
• Trac – Wiki software designed to support people who are all working the same project or code base. It has an issue tracking system built in which lets people submit bug reports and mark bugs as fixed. It also integrates with SVN (version tracking) installations.
• TikiWiki – Fairly standard wiki software with lots of features and plug-ins.

Not all Wikis are public like Wikipedia. My lab manages a wiki that is only visible to members of the lab that we use to coordinate shared resources such as laptops and archive information, such as study procedures, for latter use.

Some good wiki examples:

• Open Notebook

Google Docs

Google Docs is an online document editing site that lets you create and edit Document, Presentation, Spreadsheet, Form and Drawings online through Google’s interface. What is really nice about GoogleDocs is that you can create one document online and let other people see and edit it.

Google Docs is an extremely useful tool for working with collaborators in other parts of the world. You can easily create a shared document and edit it together at the same time. GoogleDocs also supports a chat functionality so you can talk to the other person while you are both working on the same document.

Google Docs is also very useful for running surveys or setting up registration forms. I’ve created an example form where you can rate this presentation and tell me about how you use these types of technology in your research.